Tuesday, January 04, 2011

OnLive

I have ridiculed OnLive on several occasions, mostly for the incredible inanity of their pricing structures.

OnLive, however, was shrewd enough to understand that their pricing structure equaled certain death, and they changed it. They've also done a nice job building relationships--as an example, they just announced the the OnLive client will be preinstalled as an application in the new line of Vizio VIA Plus products. That includes "televisions, Blu-ray players, tablet computers and mobile phones."

The micro console also recently shipped, to generally favorable reviews. In other words, the news coming out now about OnLive seems to be the kind of news associated with a company that has a good chance of surviving.

Do they still have problems? Sure. Their pricing still seems too high on particular games, but improving the flexibility of their pricing model doesn't seem unduly difficult. And there are competitors on the way (Gaikai, for one). But the streaming delivery system seems to work much better than most people (including myself) expected, and they always seem to be in the news for positive reasons.

For a company that was seemingly headed for a quick, conclusive dirt nap, just being alive and kicking is an achievement.